Nick DiEugenio, violin and visual art

"Inspired by Bach": The Six Solos for Violin without Bass Accompaniment

March 7, 2024 | 7:30 pm

Britton Recital Hall
Earl V. Moore Building
1100 Baits Dr
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Free - no tickets required

Inspired by Bach is a full-length presentation of the complete Six Solos for Violin without Bass Accompaniment (Sei Solo a Violino senza Basso accompagnato). These six solos are accompanied here by original visual art inspired by each movement of Bach’s music. The original program is divided into three parts averaging about 45 minutes; the total experience including intermissions is just under three hours. Today’s performance at SMTD is an excerpt, anticipated as 90 minutes in length (about half the length of the total cycle).

“Inspired by each of Bach’s 27 movements, I have created 27 pastel paintings using a mixture of soft pastels, hard pastels, sanded paper, and alcohol. During the performance, each piece is projected during its corresponding musical movement… Bach’s musical motives, characters, key areas, compositional structures, and hidden messages all serve as generative sources in this series. I conceive of each work as an entry in a ‘musician’s sketchbook,’ this exhibit serving as a way of sharing my musical interpretive process rather than asserting any professional identity as a visual artist.”
– Nicholas DiEugenio, January 2024

Presented by the Department of Strings and the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, with support from the Sally Fleming Master Class Fund.

ABOUT THE GUEST ARTIST

Violinist NICHOLAS DIEUGENIO has been heralded for his “excellent…evocative” playing (The New York Times), full of “rapturous poetry” (American Record Guide). Nicholas is in-demand as a soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble leader, creating powerful shared experiences in music ranging from early baroque to contemporary commissions.

A core member of the Sebastians, a period group hailed as “topnotch” by the New Yorker and “sharp-edged and engaging” by the New York Times, Nicholas also performs and records with pianist and wife Mimi Solomon. Their award-winning duo project “Unraveling Beethoven” comprises a full cycle of the Beethoven violin sonatas along with response works from composers Tonia Ko, Robert Honstein, Jesse Jones, Allen Anderson, and D.K. Garner.

His Musica omnia recording of the complete Schumann violin sonatas with Chi-Chen Wu on fortepiano was named one of the Top 10 albums of 2015 by The Big City. His August 2017 release on the New Focus label with Mimi Solomon, critically lauded as “a touching, committed tribute” (I Care If You Listen), is an homage to the late Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Stucky. The disc features Stucky’s Sonata for violin and piano, two new works by Stucky’s students Jesse Jones and Tonia Ko, and the previously unrecorded Violin Sonata of Robert Palmer.

A two-time prize-winner at the prestigious Fischoff competition, Nicholas is passionately committed to collaboration, and has performed chamber music with Laurie Smukler, Joel Krosnick, Joseph Lin, Peter Salaff, and Ani Kavafian, as well as members of the Meta4 Quartet. As a baroque and classical violinist, he has performed with violinists Ingrid Matthews and Aislinn Nosky, as well as members of Tafelmusik, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque, and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has also performed as guest Principal Second Violinist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Nicholas is an alumnus of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, where he was deeply influenced by the musicianship of pianist Seymour Lipkin. At the same time, Nicholas also strives to incorporate musical elements from some of his favorite rock icons such as Jimi Hendrix, Anthony Kiedis, and Thom Yorke.

Rooted in a deeply compassionate approach to teaching, Nicholas is currently Associate Professor of Violin at UNC Chapel Hill, and is co-artistic director of MYCO, a non-profit chamber music organization for middle and high school students. Formerly Assistant Professor of Violin at the Ithaca College School of Music, Nicholas continues as a faculty member of the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont during the summers. Nicholas holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music (B.M, M.M) and the Yale School of Music (D.M.A., A.D.), and he performs on a baroque violin made by Karl Dennis in 2011, and also on an 1835 violin made by J.B. Vuillaume.

www.nicholasdieugenio.com
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